Trickster
by lionesseyes13
Summary: Kyprioth describes his relationship with Eleni, George, and Aly Cooper.


Trickster

Kyprioth had never been a great god, not like his insufferable older brother Mithros, or his alternatively cruel-and-kind sister the Mother Goddess. However, he knew that he was really the deity favored by most of humanity, even if the foolish creatures rarely thought to build him temples or burn him incense. After all, while humans spent a lot of time appealing to uncompromising Mithros for justice, praying to the temperamental Goddess for fertility, and begging the indifferent Black God for the oblivion of death after a lifetime of suffering or asking for mercy for a dead loved one, the fact remained that a joke did a better job than any great god at cheering up the average human being who was feeling depressed for whatever petty, temporal reason. Humans, foolish creatures that they were, usually imagined jokes as anonymous inventions that floated around society, developing and restoring bonds between people and lowering the productivity of beings everywhere. They had the bad habit of forgetting that Kyprioth was the king of jokes and author of tricks, which were the nastier counterparts of jokes.

Just as humans were typically blind to the power and machinations of the Trickster god they paid more homage to than they could ever know, Kyprioth's fellow deities were likewise prone to forgetting about the danger a clever lover of chaos could pose to their serious plans. In the centuries since Mithros and the Goddess had thrust him out of the Copper Isles, inflicting the blight of the luarin on his precious raka, his older brother and sister had gradually forgotten the injury they had done him and the only race that had the wisdom to regard him as their patron. They directed their attention to other matters—other wars and conquests—and Kyprioth often roamed around the Mortal Realms in one of his many funny disguises, gathering information in an unobtrusive way about when it would be most opportune to toss the dice and hope for a high number in the great wager he was planning. Mithros and the Goddess might have thought that he had been exiled from the Copper Isles, but they had forgotten the truth of humor—that it could never really be stifled, even by conquest and persecution. If one joke fell flat, another one could always be told, and, if one prank failed to impress, another one could always be attempted. It was the nature of the Trickster to continue with a smirk or a laugh after even the most terrible setbacks.

That was why he was to be found on a cold night in 439 H.E. in the guise of a lone Player with a beaky nose (a comical touch he couldn't resist), bowing before a statue of the Mother Goddess as if in worship and knowing that one of the Corus temple's more loquacious priestesses would surely approach him for gossip from the outside world.

"It's cold out there, isn't it?" whispered a priestess with friendly hazel eyes, coming to kneel beside him.

"Cold enough to freeze my manhood," he answered bluntly. Then he allowed his cheeks to take on the blush of the ill-mannered but essentially good-hearted ruffian, knowing that most women found that combination of guilt and innocence adorably irresistible. Raising his head so that his flush was better visible in the flickering light of the votive candles that carried requests to the Great Mother on their flaming tongues, he added, "Forgive me. I forgot where I was and to whom I spoke. I've been on the road so long that it's easy for me to lose my manners along the way."

"And how long have you been on the road?" The priestess chuckled, and Kyprioth knew that he had her trapped then. A question was just a stumble away from revealing important information.

"Since forever." He laughed and tapped his gigantic nose. "I'm a trickster. Tricksters are always on the move. We've always offended someone with our twisted sense of humor, and we have to move along in the hope that someone with the ability to take a joke will hire us for some entertainment."

"I don't suppose that you have any news of the outside world." The priestess shot him a sideways glance. "I haven't gotten to listen to the gossip in the market or anything in the three years since I took my vows, and I only took my vows because my father couldn't afford to give me a proper dowry."

"Troops are marching to the conflicts with the Bazhir in the desert and the Scanrans along the border." Kyprioth shrugged. "I guess we know where Mithros is occupied, but you'll have to tell me where the Goddess is, my dear priestess? Have there been any strange visions of her here lately?"

"I hate to disappoint my devout wayfarer, but no." The priestess smiled slightly. "Everything has been quite normal here. We assume that we have the attention of the Goddess, as all who serve her must, but we have no proof that she is listening to our prayers in any special way."

That meant that his greatest trick would have to wait until there was some evidence that the Goddess was deeply involved in the affairs of any country besides the Copper Isles before he could act, but that didn't mean that he could not play a small joke on this young priestess. She was young, and he could feel the warmth emanating from her body on this chilly evening. She would be entertaining, he knew, and she needed the excitement with which he could fill her. He could hear in her tone that she wanted an excuse to leave this temple forever, and he could provide her with one by getting her pregnant in a way completely unassociated with ritual. Maybe the Goddess' attention could be drawn to Tortall by an errant priestess who got pregnant in a rite that was definitely not sacred to the Great Mother.

"Perhaps she is listening to our prayers if she brought me to you," commented Kyprioth, grinning like the rogue he had always been and forever would be, knowing that the Goddess would never have wanted the trickster god to tempt one of her priestesses and so in no capacity had brought the two of them together. Whatever enfolded tonight would be against the Goddess' will, not according to it, and that realization overwhelmed Kyprioth like the incense that humans never remembered to burn in his honor. He reached out to stroke the priestess' soft cheek, mentally claiming her as his and not the Goddess, and said, "You're warm. Maybe you were sent to warm me on a cold night."

Her cheeks burned, heating his hand, but she did not pull away from his touch. That meant that she wanted it—wanted him. She had a heart that was open to a rogue, which meant that she really had always been his, and not the Goddess'. When he kissed her passionately, his lips and tongue demanding everything and promising nothing, she didn't resist, but answered his heat with hers. The sweet compliments that he whispered into her ear went unchallenged, as did his assurances that there would be no consequences for anything they did together, even though she, sheltered in this temple as she was, had to know that a woman always paid a price for such illicit encounters, and he knew that she was just going to be another prank he played on his sister. At the very least, it would be a laugh to see the Goddess angry at one of her priestesses, and, at the most, it would distract the Goddess from the Copper Isles long enough for Kyprioth to set his plans to free his people into motion.

In the end, it was almost disappointingly easy to tempt the priestess down a dark niche, to remove her vestments, and to violate a very private sanctuary that had been consecrated to the Goddess, using one of her priestesses for his own amusement and base purposes on ground sacrosanct to the Great Mother. Making terrible mischief was never so difficult as mortals or even other gods believed.

When they had both found climax and relief on frigid alcove tiles, Kyprioth gave the priestess a final kiss on the cheek—the only one he had planted there during their brief affair—pulled on his clothes, and disappeared from the temple, satisfied with his performance as a Player. The priestess had not been wearing a charm against pregnancy, and he had used his powers to tweak fate enough for her to conceive a child from their union. The Goddess would be furious at the pregnancy, especially if she could sense that the baby was sired by Kyprioth. She would try to end the pregnancy in a miscarriage or a stillbirth, but the priestess was strong—strong enough to survive giving birth as a mortal to the child of a god—and Kyprioth would champion her and the life already forming in her womb in the Divine Realms not only to spite his sister but because he also sensed that the longer the joke he had conceived tonight lasted, the funnier it would be. Any child of his would be a riot, bringing much marvelous mayhem and mischief into the world.

Kyprioth smiled as he wove his way through the city streets that were crowded even at this time of night, deftly relieving every pocket in reach of several coins just for the joy of imagining the anger each person he stole from would feel and pass onto others once they recognized that they had been robbed. He was aware that when mortals thought of him at all, they considered him a heartless schemer who played cruel pranks on mortals just to throw back his head and laugh out loud at their suffering. With a grin, he would have agreed with such a charge, acknowledging that everything he did to and for mortals was for his own amusement, not for their benefit, but he would also have added that all gods were the same, because all of them—especially the mighty Mithros and the Great Mother Goddess—used mortals for their own entertainment and gain. Moving mortals on the cosmic chessboard of life and seeing how many fell was the most fun a divine entity could have, after all.

The priestess didn't fall. She howled and sweated through her long, painful labor, and she praised the Goddess, instead of Kyprioth, for her survival. When she refused to surrender the son who had nearly killed her in childbirth, she was thrown out of the temple in disgrace and reduced to living in the Corus slums, ironically punished for the crime of defying the Great Mother by insisting on being a mother.

The child, who had inherited her honest hazel eyes and the beaky nose he had assumed as a Player, was a scamp—a rascal who lied, stole, and relied on a quick wit and infectious smile to get him out of trouble that should have cost him a beating or a limb—and Kyprioth, watching from the Divine Realms the mischief his son caused, decided that he wasn't the worst absentee father in history since he knew that much. And he wasn't abusive or a drunkard. He was just a trickster who thought of mortals—even his son—as jokes, not as people with fears and dreams.

But, even he, with his warped wit, could occasionally be moved to compassion. When the boy was eight, hiding behind bins in an alley and about to be caught red-handed by guards with a full purse stolen from a wealthy merchant, it was Kyprioth who answered his desperate plea to any listening god for rescue. What had driven him to show mercy was the broken tears from a child who was always so stoic, and the defiant set of a chin that said to the deities he appealed to: _I don't owe nothin' to you, and you don't owe nothin' to me, but I ain't askin' for a miracle. Just a little bit of luck will do. _

He had given the boy a lot of luck. He tricked the guards into seeing a solid stone wall where the boy and the bins were. Then, as the guards continued what would now be a fruitless search, he appeared to the boy, who looked up from mopping his eyes with the cuff of his shirt, to ask, "Are you Mithros? 'Cause you don't look like them statues of him up at the temple, so you need to get better artists if you are."

"No, boy, I'm not Mithros." Kyprioth smirked, pleased with the cheekiness of his audacious son. "I'm a trickster like you. Surely you didn't think that Mithros, god of the righteous, would save a snot-nosed thief from his well-deserved punishment, did you? You must have known that Mithros is so focused on justice for the victim that he can't be bothered with mercy for the criminal, or am I wrong to assume you have some wits about you?"

Not that Mithros the merciless was always concerned about justice for the wronged. The raka of the Copper Isles had been immensely abused by the luarin, and Mithros ignored that terrible injustice. Mithros, god of the righteous, had even helped the luarin oppress the raka, but the raka were the chosen people of the trickster, so the last laugh would be on Mithros for thinking that he could crush their wild spirits with violence and injustice.

"I've wits enough about me to know not to trust you any farther than I can throw you, and that ain't far." All rebelliousness and wariness, the boy folded his arms across his chest.

"No, it ain't far indeed, because I don't think that any mortal has managed to throw me before." Kyprioth chuckled and allowed himself to fall into the boy's slang. "But even if you don't trust me, lad, you belong to me, and you have since you chose to lie and steal. Only the trickster god cares about liars, thieves, and rebels. Work for me well and learn from me, and you will rise. Remember to be swift of mind and of foot."

With a last smirk and a cheery wave, he vanished. In the future, he would appear to the boy many times, teaching him to become a better and better rogue. He chuckled when the boy, not yet seventeen, became the youngest King of Thieves ever to terrorize Corus, and when the man that boy became started to bring chaos to many countries as head of Tortall's spies. And when that man had a daughter who loved codes, sneaking, and disguises, he figured that he was being an indulgent grandfather when he provided her with a chance to fulfill her dream as a spy in his great wager, and he laughed aloud when he saw just how good his joke with the priestess in the temple had turned out for his greatest prank on Mithros and the Goddess.


End file.
